Collaboration and music come together - again!

Once again, my twin interests of music and collaboration come together. This time they have fused to create the 'Twtr Symphony'.

To find out about it, and the global collaboration it entails, click here:

http://twtrsymphony.instantencore.com/web/home.aspx

Create a recognisable partnership platform or hub

To create drive and direction within a partnership a sustainable and powerful source of energy needs to be created at its heart. A significant number of partnerships have done this by identifying or creating a particular organisation, or grouping of key organisations, that can become the credible centre of the partnership, the hub of the nexus.

To be a credible platform or hub that can support the effective development of a partnership the selected organisation or organisations need the following characteristics:

•       Capacity in terms of relevant expertise, knowledge, money and other resources likely to be needed.
•       A willingness to share these resources with others involved in the partnership in order to help them build their capacity to contribute effectively.
•       An obvious passion for the partnership’s area of activity.
•       A clear vision of the direction and future of not only the partnership itself, but also the whole area within which the partnership is operating.
•       A strong commitment to seeking out and encouraging new blood, in the form of partners and others, that could provide the partnership with additional perspectives, creativity and innovation.
•       A commitment to making itself, the partnership as a whole and the processes that support it as accessible and transparent as is realistically possible. 

Another important point to consider when identifying and developing a platform or hub for a partnership is its capacity to consolidate and continue the work once the partnership initiative has come to an end. Is the hub organisation committed and resourceful enough to ensure that the benefits realised through partnership working are absorbed effectively into the ever – flowing mainstream of organisational and institutional practice?


Read more in 'Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success - 2nd Edition' 

Identify the OWNORS of your partnership or collaboration

All partnerships are unique. When evaluating the effectiveness of your partnership use this extended version of SWOT analysis to identify and exploit its unique or novel features:

• What are the opportunities presented by the work and activities of your partnership and how could they be made the most of?
• What weaknesses have been identified so far and how could they be overcome?
• What aspects are novel, unique or unexpected about a partnership’s work and how could they be exploited to a partnership’s advantage?
• What specific obstacles has a partnership experienced so far and how have they/could they be overcome?
• What risks have been identified to a partnership’s work and how could they be managed effectively?
• What strengths has a partnership displayed as it goes about its activities and how could they be maximised?

Many partnerships underestimate the uniqueness of their situation, context or makeup; they therefore fail to accrue any advantages that could arise from it. Do not make this mistake: identify your OWNORS.


For more about collaboration go to: Sleeping-with-the-Enemy-Achieving-Collaborative-Success-2nd-Edition  

   

Listen to people's stories and feedback

A half – way house for young offenders had always been able to build good relationships with the youths in its care, the police and the other local authorities and services it needed to work with in partnership.

Quite suddenly, however, this ability to build positive relationships disappeared, almost overnight, and nobody could figure out why.

That is until one of the assistant cooks working in the kitchen just happened to mention that the police liaison officers had recently changed, and that whereas the original ones took off their hats, jackets and lapels before they entered the building, the new ones did not.

She had noticed that this caused anxiety and suspicion amongst the young people at the centre and that their behaviour had altered accordingly. This was not surprising given their history and previous experience of the police; it was more or less a conditioned response.

As soon as the new officers were given this feedback and they began taking off their hats, jackets and lapels before entering the building, the anxiety, suspicion and negative behaviour began to disappear and relationships gradually returned to normal.

Listen to the stories and feedback of your partnership's people. Informal feedback from perhaps unexpected sources can help identify problems accurately and enable them to be addressed quickly and effectively.

For more about collaboration go to: Sleeping-with-the-Enemy-Achieving-Collaborative-Success-2nd-Edition

The importance of identifying, creating and taking advantage of chance opportunities

The following short post by Angela Maiers, which I found via one of the web groups I belong to, describes how to begin valuing and taking advantage of the chance opportunities and connections that are the life-blood of most collaborative ventures.  If you are involved in anything collaborative it is well worth ten minutes of your time:

http://switchandshift.com/making-serendipity-tactical-is-randomness-part-of-your-leadership-strategy


For more about collaboration go to: Sleeping-with-the-Enemy-Achieving-Collaborative-Success-2nd-Edition

A pinch of pain will prompt your partnership's progress

What really prompts businesses, organisations, institutions and governments to collaborate? Is it the greater good? Is it that ‘we are all in it together’? Is it that the complex, scary issues of the world cannot be addressed by one business, one organisation, one government alone? Is it the recognition that we are but one species under the sun and that collaborating is the right, ‘moral’ thing to do?

No, I think it is pain that provides the sharp prod towards collaboration: the pain that a business feels when it is losing market share and money; the pain that a government feels when it is losing power and control; the pain that a charity feels when it cannot feed those in need. Loss of profit, loss of security, loss of credibility, loss of reputation, loss of power, loss of ability: all of these and more cause the pain that prods collaboration.

Just consider the following for a moment:

• Nations say much about the importance of international collaboration to combat global warming, but it is those countries at its painful sharp-end or, perhaps more appropriately, at its drowning waterline that are most passionate in their advocacy. Those not so directly affected, at least for the present, shed crocodile and occasionally sincere tears, content to throw their cash in from the side-lines and help (quite literally) mop up after disasters strike.
• Bank executives talk heart-warmingly about the need to work with businesses to combat and overcome the economic recession, but then stockpile the government printed money that would be of most help. This is their insurance against the most excruciating pain they can ever experience: becoming a bank without money (Okay, this is an example of the fear of pain working against collaboration and the greater good, but it still shows that pain or the fear of pain is a prime motivator for institutional decision-making -- and I wanted to get the banks in somewhere).
• European Governments (and sometimes their people – as the recent events in the Ukraine demonstrate) argue enthusiastically for the political and economic advantages of an expanding European Community; they do this most loudly if in danger of experiencing the pain of national poverty, bankruptcy and political instability.
• UK Regional Authorities have only recently begun to share and merge services, even though it always made sense to remove duplication and dismantle bureaucratic and territorial boundaries. Why? They are experiencing the pain caused by not having enough money, people, expertise, influence and status to get things done on their own.
• The energy companies of the west, experiencing the famine-pain caused by their dwindling stockpiles, frantically seek to collaborate with fuel rich nations in exploring and exploiting new oil and gas fields.
• Failing mining companies wait until they are ‘dead men walking’ before the impending pain of their liquidation makes them unilaterally share their highly prized expertise and statistics in the hope of encouraging and benefiting from the collaborations that may result.

Pharmaceutical companies? Well, they act differently. They exist within a sector that would not function effectively without the on-going collaboration that is hard-wired into their ways of working. Also, interestingly and perhaps not totally coincidentally, they work in an industry where pain and its alleviation is never far away from their thoughts; it is always in some way or other the focus of their decisions and actions. It is tempting to think that this awareness of pain and the need to alleviate and if possible end it affects the day-to-day thinking of those working in the pharmaceutical industries, making them more pain aware than those working within other industries. (I am aware this is probably a fanciful notion, but it is interesting non-the-less.)

Am I being overly simplistic, overly sweeping in my above statements? 

Perhaps so; to be honest, probably so!

But doing so feels so easy, so comfortable; and I do not think this is entirely down to my natural predispositions, my warped perceptions or my flawed judgement. I think there is a hard, sharp, spiky kernel of truth in my belief that pain is one of the strongest motivators of people who seek to work collaboratively.

For the sensitive amongst us, and indeed for my own sensitive side, it is important to realise that the concept of a ‘pain driver’ for collaboration has a positive and caring aspect. (My comment about the pharmaceutical industry touched on this very briefly.) We humans can be prodded by another sort of pain: sympathetic pain, feeling pain for others and their problems. This pain prompts charities to work with each other and the public and private sectors to improve the help they give to those in need; it prompts health and social care professionals to integrate their functions to enhance the quality of life of patients; it prompts the collaborative approaches of social enterprises that seek to improve the life chances of disadvantaged people.

So, I believe the pain driver, in either selfish or selfless form, is very significant and powerful in encouraging people to collaborate and that it must be embraced rather than underestimated, avoided or dismissed.

We must not be shy about seeking out the pain that threatens us (and those we are working with or trying to help). If we find pain and suffering we must explore and share it with partners. We must be strikingly clear about the pain's consequences and graphically demonstrate how its neglect could enable it to become excruciating and eventually immensely harmful to all concerned.

Does this sound sadomasochistic? Perhaps it does, but obviously this is only the case when it is done without any purpose other than the joy of inflicting pain. If it is done with another purpose in mind, the need to create closer, more intense and even passionate collaboration among partners, it is an act of kindness, perhaps even love.

Do you pass or share?

Passing information to other organisations is not the same as sharing it.

Passing implies distance and the negotiating of boundaries.

Sharing implies closeness and the lowering of boundaries.

To use a surprising, unsubtle but certainly very memorable example:

US aircraft bombing enemy positions in Iraq used spotters on the ground to guide them to possible targets. Initially, these spotters had to "pass" the information back to analysts in the Pentagon who would evaluate it and decide whether or not the aircraft attacked. Whilst this passing and processing and analysing and deciding were going on, the enemy were not staying put. Consequently, aircraft frequently attacked positions no longer occupied by the enemy.

The system was changed, allowing pilots and spotters to talk directly, share and evaluate information in real-time, and make decisions about whether or not to attack. Consequently, aircraft began to attack more positions occupied by the enemy.

The above example shows the value of real-time sharing and exploring rather than serial passing and processing. It shows that creating time for face-to-face or voice-to-voice sharing and evaluating of information makes a process more efficient and effective --not less. 

But when collaborating with others it is safer to pass rather than to share; you can maintain your distance and boundaries and the power and control they provide. It is riskier to share; distance and boundaries are eroded and so too your power and control. The Pentagon defence chiefs and analysts were taken completely out of the above process, losing most of their direct control over pilot decisions. (They did, however, gain statistically superior results.)

It is no surprise that businesses, institutions and organisations with power and influence are instinctively inclined, if having to collaborate, towards passing rather than sharing. If they share and their power is eroded as a result, what will become of them? What will be their purpose? What will be the point of them? What will be their place in the world? What will be their unique selling point? How will they survive? How will they make a profit? How will they continue to matter?

So, collaborations between powerful and influential businesses and organisations can often be cumbersome: focused upon creating routes and staging posts for passing information between partners rather than upon sharing, analysing, evaluating and exploiting information with partners.

Anyone who watches television news bulletins about failures of joined-up working knows the truth of this. The police, social and health services have worked hard at building pathways between their respective organisations for sharing vital information about potentially vulnerable people. All too often, however, the information is received and "processed" without its deeper meaning (the opinions, attitudes and contextual knowledge the various agencies have and hold about it) being shared. 

When information is passed rather than shared it can become inactive, dormant: a packaged product to be moved or stored rather than the flowing fuel of insight. Someone receiving or processing such information is more likely to read its label and pigeon-hole it rather than open it up and explore it.

Passed information all too easily becomes "past" information that is processed and shelved rather than talked about and acted upon.

Passing and processing information encourages a functional mind-set that is lacking in curiosity. It will involve databases, emails and documents and perhaps the odd follow-up procedural phone call. Very rarely will it involve people sharing their thoughts about information face-to-face or voice-to-voice in the "here and now". 

Sharing and exploring information encourages a creative mind-set brimming with curiosity. It will involve databases, emails and documents and perhaps the odd procedural phone call. It will always involve people sharing their thoughts about information face-to-face or voice-to-voice in the "here and now".

So, do you play safe and pass or do you take a risk and share? 

The added risk that accompanies sharing information in real-time will probably be worth it in terms of better use of time and money and increased efficiency and effectiveness. 

If you play safe and continue to "pass", your collaborations will likely become more and more time consuming and expensive as the pathways you create to move information back and forth between partners become storage space for parked information.